I have no data to back this up, but I’m guessing that love songs comprise a plurality of all the pop songs ever written. I suppose there is simply something about music that is particularly conducive to opening your heart, being vulnerable and expressing the deepest of emotions.
Whether bathed in strings and backing choruses or accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar or piano, a quality love song can pluck heartstrings like no other genre. They can be epically tragic – like Tom Jones’ “Delilah” – or wistfully hopeful – like the Plain White T’s’ “Hey There Delilah.” As long as you have your own Delilah to sing about, you have the start of an affecting love song.
Musicians can also use misdirection to score their points. Not all great love songs are serious or sentimental. They can use humor or sarcasm. They can bury deep feeling in nursery rhyme presentation. They can be transgressive.
Quirky love songs from the world of pop and rock
We won’t be discussing country songs in this particular list but let me just say that country music has provided some wonderfully quirky examples from John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves” to the Loretta Lynn/Conway Twitty classic “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly” – songs that use a lovers’ faults to emphasize the bond that exists.
Here, then are a dozen songs that wander a bit off the beaten path when it comes to expressing the feelings of the heart. Musically or lyrically – and sometimes both – these songs are no less profound than “I Will Always Love You” or anything ever written about a woman named Delilah.
“I’m Sticking With You” by The Velvet Underground (1970)
I usually use the release date of a song when placing it chronological order but I’m arbitrarily making an exception here. “I’m Sticking With You” wasn’t released on an album until the compilation record VU in 1985, long after the Velvet Underground had broken up. I’m dating it back to the 1970 recording sessions for their final proper studio album, Loaded.
Drummer Maureen Tucker had already recorded a quirky tune called “After Hours” which closed out their 1969 self-titled album. Her flat New York accent and sing-songy delivery was used to even greater effect on this little nursery rhyme of a devotional promise which would have a major impact on the lo-fi revolution of the late ‘80s and ‘90s.
“Lola” by the Kinks (1970)
Ray Davies’ songwriting genius is once again on display in this great rocker from a period when rock and roll was indeed king. For such an inherently conservative person, Davies was capable of seeing the future and writing brilliantly transgressive songs.
None was more potent – or catchy – than this sweet, erotic poem to the joys and mysteries of sexual identity. Strange as it may seem today, Davies actually got more pushback in 1970 for name-dropping “Coca Cola” in his lyrics than for singing blissfully about Lola, who “walks like a woman and talks like man.”
“Ben” by Michael Jackson (1972)
A quirky love song AND a number hit? Only Michael Jackson, right? He was 13. His phenomenally successful run with his brothers was slowing down. Michael went solo. And his first major hit was a love about a boy and his rat.
Not a metaphoric rat, mind you. An actual killer rat named Ben, from the movie Ben, a sequel to 1971’s Willard. There have been love songs addressed to plenty of non-human entities. Rod Stewart sang one about soccer. Roger Taylor sang one about his car. Animals certainly have had their fair share.
But then it would usually be more along the lines of Paul singing to his adorable sheepdog Martha in the Beatles' “Martha My Dear.” Maybe only Michael Jackson could unironically sing the hell out of a love song to a rat.
“Ariel” by Dean Friedman (1977)
It was not a big hit. Friedman never had a big hit. But I don’t think a season goes by when I don’t feel the need to give a listen to this goofiest of all hippie-inspired love songs. That’s in part because of Freidman’s charmingly whiny vocals, but more due to his ingenious word play.
“Standing by the waterfall in Paramus Park
She was working for the friends of B.A.I.
She was collecting quarters in a paper cup
She was looking for change and so was I.”
I wish I wrote that.
“Our Secret” by Beat Happening (1985)
This is the same year that “I’m Sticking With You” finally appeared on a disc, and the similarities are apparent. Calvin Johnson’s proudly lo-fi Beat Happening came out of the fledgling music scene percolating along in Washington state through the 1980s, only to take over the world a decade later.
Johnson and his bandmates Heather Lewis and Brent Lunsford were about as far removed from the Nirvanas and Pearl Jams of the world as a band could be. They were simple, direct, childlike and to their fans, positively magical.
“Our Secret” was the first track from their debut, and Johnson’s flat baritone showed how charm and innocence could elevate a love song in ways that home recording artists are continuing to explore today.
“She’s an Angel” by They Might be Giants (1986)
If Michael Jackson could sing a love song to a rat, then They Might Be Giants – the kings of quirk – could easily do one about being in love with an actual angel. In the early days (this was from their debut album), John Flansberg and John Linnell could do more standard new wavy love songs like “Don’t Let’s Start” or “Ana Ng.” but they just couldn’t avoid being quirky.
As in:
"We both said 'I really love you'
The Shriners loaned us cars
We raced up and down the sidewalk twenty thousand million times.”
Somehow, it kind of makes sense.
“Punk Rock Girl” by the Dead Milkmen (1988)
The ultimate in emo-punk love. It opens with a trip to Philly legend Zipperhead and proceeds to laud the joys of Minnie Pearl, Mojo Nixon and stolen cars.
This is from the group’s fourth album Beelzebubba, written off in its day as a trifling piece of satiric fluff, and now considered a vital part of ‘80’s counterculture, helping prepare for musical revival in the 1990s.
“I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule (1985)
I have nothing against Katy Perry. I actually like her 2008 song “I Kissed a Girl.” I just happen to like the totally different song of the same name by the late, great Jill Sobule about 61 times more. Where Perry’s version is serious and dramatic – borderline ponderous – Sobule’s is a sweet, charming earworm brimming with youthful innocence.
Fifteen years on from Ray Davies’ “Lola,” mainstream radio was still not ready for a young woman innocently stumbling into a relationship with a female friend, though I suspect what the mainstream really objected to was the singer’s description of her handsome boyfriend as being “dumb as a box of hammers.” Sobule’s career was filled with quirk and we lost a remarkable, unique voice when she passed away earlier this year.
“Dirt Track Date” by Southern Culture on the Skids (1985)
The Dead Milkmen could play with the whole satiric country music vibe, but they were kids from Philly. SCOTS is an authentic satirist. Operating in the same territory as the Beat Farmers, SCOTS could play solid rockabilly with a knowing wink.
Here, they joyfully anticipate romance at the dirt track, where “I'm gonna get so drunk you’re gonna have to pick me off the ground.” That’s the first three minutes. The final five and a half are just sounds of cars screeching around the track. Maybe that’s not quirky. But it’s something.
“The Bad Touch” by Bloodhound Gang (1995)
The gloves were off by the mid-‘90s. The popular success of gangsta rap removed any sense of propriety from popular music. And so we got Jimmy Pop and Bloodhound Gang. Actually, “The Bad Touch” is one of their tamest songs. From a band that devoted a different kind of love song to the porn star Chasey Lain and showed off perhaps the poorest taste of the ‘90s with “A Lap Dance is So Much Better When the Stripper is Crying,” “The Bad Touch” is almost romantic.
And funny. Vulgar,? Sure. Juvenile Abso-effin’-lutely. But if you’re throwing a Hail Mary at the single’s bar, you might try “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals - so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”
“Anyone Else But You” by The Moldy Peaches (2000)
OK, after Bloodhound, it’s nice to return to the sweet innocence you find in Moldy Peaches. Kimya Dawson and Adam Green have the goofy charm of Beat Happening and the Maureen Tucker numbers from Velvet Underground.
Dawson contributed a number of songs to the surprise indie hit film Juno in 2007 and this song found a new audience. As she sings here, they “sure are cute for two ugly people.” It may be the quirkiest lyric of them all.
“Hey Thanks” by The Wonder Years (2010)
One final journey to that clever, cute, sweet, innocent and supremely catchy quirky side of romance. This time it begins with Dan Campbell on the quirkiest of rock instruments – the ukelele. Soon, he’s joined by guest vocalist Rachel Minton. And then We Are the Union’s Matt Belanger is blowing an unlikely trombone.
By the end, it actually morphs into a real rock and roll shouter. But it never stops being quirky.
We’re going to stop in 2010 because I used up all twelve of my spots. But don’t believe for a moment that quirky love songs are a thing of the past. Just give a listen to Thumpasaurus’s “Struttin’.” And be prepared to dance.